I shall admit that I have always had an innate weakness for shabby clothes and so inured am I by now to holes and so on and I have become quite impervious to the offense of alarm or unease or pity such thread-worn garbs might occasionally cause in others. I remember once years ago seeing a French girl in Dublin wearing a light coloured corduroy coat which had large stains down the front of it, on both sides of the zip, and the stains were very dark as if they had come from the pulp of a dark fruit such as a damson or perhaps some elderberries and when I was first introduced to this French girl with the filthy corduroy coat I couldn’t take my eyes off these decadent blossoms of deepest crimson that thrived on both sides of the zip and whenever I met her on subsequent occasions I'd always feel a bit put out and slightly bored if she wasn’t wearing it. I thought those stains were quite exquisite and exciting somehow - as if she were brandishing a glimpse of herself in process; they were so vivid and unashamed.